My dear colleagues,
I am sure most of you have heard this already, but in case you have not:
" President's Executive Order 'Protecting and Improving Medicare for Our Nation's Seniors' was issued on October 3, 2019. Section 5 of this EO asks the HHS Secretary to propose regulatory changes that would eliminate supervision requirements for Non physician providers(NPPs) and create Medicare reimbursement parity for NPPs and physicians. So basically, Medicare dollars and eventually all third-party payments for care would be leveled (flattened) across physicians, NPs, and PAs. "
This, as you can imagine is not a good idea and we need our voices heard. The following is a copy paste of a letter written in response (*Taken from PPP facebook group). Deadline is January 17th. I've already posting this on the medicalschool group.
" PLEASE email the HHS Secretary at EMAIL: [email protected] Subject: “Scope of Practice” Secretary Azar and Ms. Verma, I am a physician. I am writing to oppose the proposed expansion of the scope of practice of non-physician practitioners (NPPs) via elimination or reduction of supervision requirements by CMS. I believe that ALL patients deserve physicians as the leaders of their healthcare teams in order to preserve high-quality care. I oppose the proposed reimbursement parity of NPPs with physicians for Medicare patients. This proposal is financially irresponsible and would hasten the insolvency of the Medicare program. This devaluation of physician care will cause the unintended consequence of more physicians leaving clinical medicine: some voluntarily (due to early retirement or alternative employment) and many others involuntarily (due to replacement by Non- physician providers at places of employment). In addition, pay parity would eliminate the incentive for young people to pursue a career as a physicians which will greatly worsen the existing physician shortage. Also, this will diminish the quality of healthcare in the United States as a whole. Who will monitor and check the errors of mid levels? What becomes of a clinical system when years of knowledge and training are devalued and irrelevant. The clinical outcomes, mortality, and morbidity; you are directly culpable if this change permitted. See, this issue is much larger than one may realize. The United states has always been a leader in healthcare worldwide because we could always trust that our healthcare providers are competent and qualified to the highest degrees possible. People travel from all over the world daily to come here in order to get high quality healthcare they can trust. By allowing pay parity for less qualified providers, you would saturate the healthcare system with less trained providers who will reduce the quality of healthcare in this country as a whole. Is this what we want our healthcare system to become? Do we want our healthcare system to become one where ordinary Americans have to go abroad in order to see a real physician? This is not acceptable. I am gravely concerned about the far-reaching, negative consequences of the proposals in Section 5 of the President's Executive Order on the public health and financial health of our nation. This is just not a good idea for our country. As a stakeholder, I appreciate the opportunity to provide meaningful feedback. Please contact me if I can provide further input. Sincerely, Dr. _____ "
** tl;dr: The current government is trying another way to screw the field of medicine and belittle our education. Email ([email protected]) to tell them to please stop and protect our future. Deadline is January 17th. **
Source: Original link
